


The Rise of Skyrider

by TheAlchemistsDaughter



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Actor AU, F/M, Maybe a bit sad but it made me feel better, Post-TRoS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22023481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAlchemistsDaughter/pseuds/TheAlchemistsDaughter
Summary: Ben and Rey are the stars of "War of Stars: The Rise of Skyrider" but they only see the ending at the premiere. Distraught by the altered ending, Rey needs Ben to make her feel better.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 92





	The Rise of Skyrider

When Kylo kissed Kira, Rey frowned.

That was odd. She was sure that between healing Kira and kissing her, Kylo was supposed to collapse. He’d be healed by his mother’s energy, and  _ then _ they’d kiss. Maybe Jay had got rid of that bit. God knows he’d changed a lot in the movie, or someone had. Rey didn’t exactly agree with a lot of the editing choices, but she’d reserved judgement until she’d seen the whole thing.

On the massive cinema screen, Kylo smiled. Ben really did have a beautiful smile. Rey hadn’t had to work very hard for those warm fuzzy tingles while filming that scene. Usually Ben was woefully serious on set. He kept his mind on work and his performance, so there hadn’t been too many smiles, not like  _ that _ at least.

Wait, where were her lines?

Actually, when was the last time either Kira  _ or _ Kylo spoke? Why was it just the score?

Then Kylo collapsed.

_ What? _

He faded away.

Open-mouthed, Rey turned to Finn beside her. He looked just as shocked, but the way an audience member might be shocked by the death of one of the main characters. Finn didn’t know that had never been in the script. The script had changed several times, so Finn could be surprised without being confounded, because he didn’t know  _ they’d never filmed that scene _ .

She watched herself emote something completely different to what the scene called for. Kylo was supposed to get up. It was supposed to be a happy ending. Rey watched the ending unfold with her heart in her throat. Okay, so Jay had changed some things without telling them, but they’d still filmed a reunion scene in Jordan. It  _ would _ be more dramatic now, even if it made less sense, to think Kylo was dead for real before seeing him again in the last scene. Kira and Kylo still ended up together.

Except they didn’t. There she was hugging Finn and Poe. Rey remembered the take Jay had asked for more tears. There she was burying the sabers on Tatooine. There was Luke and Leia. The old lady. Rey had filmed this scene almost every possible way to confuse leakers, and she was curious to see what take they would use. Even she hadn’t been allowed to know. Would she answer “Kira of the Resistance”? “Kira of Jakku”? “Just Kira”? She hoped they wouldn’t use the “Kira Palpatine” take, or the “Kira Sky-”

“Kira Skyrider,” her character said on the screen.

Rey winced. Goddammit, they should have told her.

But then-

Credits.

_ What?! _

Where was Kylo? Where was Ben?

She looked for him in the seats around her. She had Finn on her left and Rose on her right. It wouldn’t be seemly to crane her neck too obviously to search for Ben where people could see her. Everyone would be trying to see her reaction. She had to play it cool, even if it felt like a cruel joke that  _ that _ was the end of the Skyrider saga. The ramifications tumbled in the back of her mind like pebbles announcing an avalanche as the credits rolled and John Williams’ score continued to blare.

“I thought you said Kira and Kylo end up together?” Finn said beside her.

“I did, they did, I mean-” she hissed under her breath, feeling as if confirming something like that  _ now _ would be a breach of contract. Disney was very firm on actors sticking to the company line. If that was the ending then, God, she’d have to sell it.

“And they really went with Skyrider?”

As people around them started to gather their things, Rey spotted Ben and shot up. He looked amazing, as he always did at these things. The difference between his coiffed, tuxedoed red carpet look and his goatee and beanie rehearsal look always amazed her. He could be so many different men. In the course of filming, she’d seen him made up as a prince, bloodied and sweaty, drenched, not to mention shirtless and wanting. Rey pushed that away. Just because she’d been haunted by those scenes for the last two and a half years… Now was not the time though.

“I need to talk to Ben,” she told Finn, squeezing her way past Rose and her other friends and cast-mates. Cameras would be waiting outside, and with a film this size there was always the threat of candid recordings and photos taken on phones. She had to smile, walk calmly…

She couldn’t wrap her head around it. What had happened? What had they  _ done _ ? When had this been decided, and why, and why hadn’t she been included? Didn’t Jay and the studio know it was the cast who had to sell this? Who had to answer questions on press-tours? She’d been saying for years that Kira was her own person, powerful in her own right, that her power didn’t come from a man, that anyone could be a hero.

Her hands were shaking. It was her face and her name attached to- to  _ that _ .

In front of her, Ben stood a head taller than everyone around him. She had to wait for the bottleneck to make it through the doors, everyone shaking hands and congratulating each other. It was glamourous alright, all the twinkling ball gowns and tuxedos.

Jay was talking to some exec Rey didn’t recognise. She shot him a look, but she couldn’t interrupt. Maybe this had been the plan all along and she’d just missed a message or something. A voicemail. An email that had gone to spam.

Ben was talking to Lando. He did that, gravitated to the older actors rather than the younger ones as if thirty was the Berlin Wall and they were on different sides. Rey thought she was exempt, because she was Kira. They filmed together more than anyone. She thought they were friends.

“Can I talk to you?” Rey said, intruding on his conversation with a big smile. It was important to smile at these things, as important as her red dress, or the hair and make-up that had taken hours.

He was smiling too, but when his eyes skipped to her, she saw the fracture in them. He knew what she wanted. He nodded.

She led him away, back into the maze of the cinema. The lobby was flooded with their friends and colleagues, everyone talking about it. There were a few people missing who should have been there, Phasma, Lucas himself, but just then Rey was buzzing too much with a mix of confusion, fear, and outrage to be upset about that.

She nudged into an empty theatre and Ben pulled the door shut behind them, not waiting for it to close on its own, and kept his hand on the handle. Rey stepped into him, wary of being overheard. The stars could not be found having this conversation.

Being this close to him out of character made her a little nervous. Of course, on set, she had got used to his body, his size, through innumerable lightsaber fights and the other more intimate scenes. But that was Kylo, not Ben, and that was work. It was different. She respected and admired him as an actor, hell, she’d even call herself a fan, though not in front of him. He was incredible. But he was also an intensely private person and she’d always got the impression that while he was always kinder than kind to her, he never really let her in. She was a colleague to him, not a friend, not like Finn.

But she trusted him more than anyone. She had to, to do what they did together on set. Maybe it was just that he was older, more experienced, maybe it was his deep voice and deeper eyes, but he just had this take-care aura, like he could solve all her problems with a gentle touch and inspirational word.

They were the  _ War of Stars _ figureheads in a way Finn just wasn’t. She shared that with him and no one else, even if he had got out of the press tour by promoting a film that was going to get him an Oscar instead. No, that wasn’t fair. He deserved to make movies. The world should see him perform, amazing as he was.

But they were talking about  _ War of Stars. _

“Ben, what the fuck was that? Did you know?”

He sucked his lips into his mouth, and they bloomed red when he let them out to speak. He smelled as good as he always did, like an American megastar should. It was a scent that took her back to being a teenager with a hidden glossy magazine in her bedroom in her foster home, tracing the adverts with heart-throbs endorsing cologne with a free sample, dreaming of being a famous actress.

Ben’s nostrils flared and his eyes flashed, and Rey realised he was angry and holding it in. He was too disciplined to let it out where it wasn’t wanted, even if he was famous for acting it on screen. He shook his head. “No.”

Rey could read him like a book. It was what made him such a good actor. His thoughts and feelings showed on his face like a billboard. Right now he was trying to figure it out too. He was trying to see the art in it, he was trying to save the movie in his head. Rey had moved past that. She was more concerned with the public’s reaction, and the hate and criticism _The Rise_ _of Skyrider_ might have just condemned her to.

“You didn’t?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t they  _ tell _ us?”

“I don’t know.” He pushed his hand through his hair, and Rey’s eyes followed the movement. His hair really was designed to have hands in it, the layers carding perfectly through his big fingers. He’d cut it since filming had ended, and Rey didn’t know which she preferred.

“Kylo  _ died _ .”

He looked at her then, and she almost flinched back. The anger in his eyes burned her. Ben talked a good game about an actor’s job being to tell the story, and the script being the script, but Rey knew Kylo Ren was more Ben’s creation than anyone else’s. He lived and breathed Kylo. He  _ was _ Kylo. He spoke his words and thought his thoughts and felt his feelings. Kylo wouldn’t exist without Ben Solo. There was no way Ben would be okay with his character dying like  _ that _ . He would have wanted to act a death scene if that was what it was, and Jay, or Disney, or  _ somebody _ had taken that away from him.

“Did they… They reversed the resurrection scene, didn’t they? I mean, they must have because we didn’t- It looked so-” She didn’t want to say it.

Bad.

It looked  _ bad _ .

The last film in their trilogy, in ‘the Skyrider Saga’ as they’re supposed to call it, but Rey knew the whole story  _ was _ the Skyriders. 42 years had just ended, and it was… bad. Story choices could always be defended, but that? The editing, the pacing, the framing, the lighting… They cut out the dialogue! Kylo Ren had died with no final words. The wildly-anticipated ‘Kilo’ kiss had happened with no declaration of love or anything!

In front of her, Ben seethed, almost vibrating with it, and nodded. Rey felt frantic, but that paused her for a moment. He honestly looked on the verge of tears. She knew the signs because she’d watched all his movies. She put her hand to his arm, feeling his muscles flex as he balled his hand into a fist.

Rey might not have half the IMDB credits Ben did, or the awards, but Ben got it. He got Kilo, and what it had done to people, and what it meant for their lives. He understood what it meant to carry the entire moral message of the franchise on his shoulders. He understood what his character meant for kids. While Finn had been tangled up in Stormpilot discussions, and representing black people in  _ War of Stars _ , Rey had been getting called a Mary Sue and standing up for little girls who wanted to be a Jedi too. And while it was subtler, Ben had desperately been trying to preach a message about toxic masculinity, boys being alienated from their feelings, and the treatment of men damaged by war.

_ War of Stars _ had given them all a cause, whether they wanted one or not, and Kira and Kylo had become symbols for so much, and now the meaning of those symbols had been ripped from their hands. Their faces were going to be associated with this, they were the ones who were going to get fans coming up to them for decades to talk about this, and they hadn’t even known it was happening.

“Ben… What are we going to do? How could they do this? Kylo died. The last Skyrider  _ died, _ and there aren’t anymore. I mean… You’re not coming back are you? You’re not talking to them about a return or-?”

Ben shook his head. “No.” From the look on his face, it is off the table. So far off the table he’s grinding it to bits under his heel.

No one had approached her about a follow-up either.

Rey wanted to put her face in her hands, but she couldn’t smudge her make-up or upset her hair.

“And Kira, she’s a Skyrider now? Or a Palpatine? I’ve been telling people for years that Rey’s not related to anyone. Didn’t they think about that? How it makes me, and the writers, look? We either have to admit it was made up at the last minute or pretend we lied! It changes everything!”

“Rey, don’t. It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.”

“But that makes us look so stupid!” She pressed her palms into the sides of her head, stepping back from him so she could look at the floor, trying to avoid her skirt with her heels. She could cry. “I can’t believe this is how it ends.”

These movies took over her life. They were her first big acting job. She gave herself stomach ulcers stressing about these movies. For Ben, maybe they were just dumb popcorn movies, a blip in his career that he only took on because he was promised a good story, a good character, so he could make enough money to live on for the rest of his life and prop up his non-profit. He had other things going on. He would retreat to the indie scene where critics would continue to write about him as an acting god, and Rey- Rey had already decided she wouldn’t let these movies define her forever. She would have other projects too. She wanted an Oscar or a SAG award too. She wanted to do a musical. Maybe she’d do something on the West End. But for Ben those things were concrete while for Rey, they were still dreams. She didn’t want to diminish his accomplishments, but it was different for women, as evidenced by the fact that the studio had apparently bowed to the worst _War of_ _Stars_ fans and stripped Kira of the power that had been all hers.

“Hey, Rey…” Ben stepped closer, his voice soft, and then he copied what she had done to him earlier and put his hand on her arm. It was big and warm, his skin dry, and even in her current state, Rey almost shivered with it. Kira and Kylo hadn’t done a lot of skin-to-skin touching. “Don’t…”

She looked up at him. She could imagine what she looked like. As an actress, she had to be aware of the tiniest movement in her face. She knew her eyes were too big, pleading with him to give her an answer. She didn’t need him to fix it, she just wanted it to  _ make sense _ somehow. “You know what this is going to do to people. They’re going to rip it apart.”

“You’re not responsible for that.”

“But they trusted us.”

He shook his head again. “It’s not your fault,” he repeated. “Just… don’t go online.”

She scoffed. “Come on, Ben. You know it  _ means _ something to people.”

He studied her for a moment, and she could see the empathy on his face, the anguish he felt to see her like this. “Okay, why don’t I call Kathy Kennedy? Maybe I can get some answers. Maybe they’ll release another cut. I don’t know. But she likes me, so maybe…”

He actually pulled out his phone and started scrolling through the contacts, because he was Ben Solo and he could do that. Did Rey have that kind of clout? Even as the heroine of the franchise, she didn’t think she did. People just loved Ben without him having to court them the way other people had to.

Rey stopped him, covering his hand with hers. Well, ‘covering’. His hands were so big, she covered one like a cherry covers a sundae. “No, it’s too late. Everyone’s seen it. It hits theatres in two days. We can’t. We’re just going to have to go with it.”

“But you’re upset,” Ben said, chewing his lip. His eyes flicked from his phone to her eyes and held.

“So are you.” That was one of the things she liked about him. He was noble. He believed that he could make good things happen if he tried, when most other people were defeated before they ever started. He was sincere.

“But…”

Rey sighed and pulled away from him, walking down the aisle to the seats. When she sat down, staring up at the blank screen in the dark, he followed her, pushing down the seat beside her and leaving his long legs in the aisle. “Is it really over?”

“I don’t think it will ever really be over. I knew before I started this would change my life. I’d be Kylo forever.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think it would be like this. This isn’t how Jay told me it would end.”

They were quiet for another moment. There was still magic to the cinema around them. Soon it would be used to transport audiences to anywhere they wanted. They’d fall in love, get revenge, triumph, fall. Rey had always loved that growing up, the escape of it. And _The_ _Rise of Skyrider_ had been a total clunker. That in itself would be tragic if it wasn’t just so _disappointing_. The sadness weighed on her.

Beside her, Ben turned in his seat, folding himself up and slumping down so he could hang his legs over the back of the seat in front. Now their heads were level.

“That can’t be comfortable.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I used to sit like this when I was in high school. There was this old cinema, a real Old Hollywood relic, and I used to go there and sit like this and watch  _ Breakfast at Tiffany’s _ or  _ Casablanca _ or  _ North By Northwest _ .”

“Sounds nice.” Rey could picture it. Ben was so famous, of course pictures of him as a teen had hit the internet, a gangly scarecrow of a boy who didn’t hide his ears and was clearly just as opinionated as he was now but with none of the finesse or wisdom. She might even have a couple of those pictures saved to her phone.

“It was,” he said, his voice wistful. “Better than staying home sometimes.”

Rey remembered the mentions of his difficult relationship with his parents in the more in-depth interviews that have come out about him, like the one in  _ The New Yorker _ . She hadn’t read it, it had felt like eavesdropping, but quotes from it had shown up in tweets to advertise it.

She turned to study his face, his infamous profile. He really was beautiful. Everyone said it, but there was just something about him. He had an aura, a presence, when he was there with her. Rey knew millions of women would kill to be where she was, and somehow she’d managed to get him all to herself on one of the biggest nights of their lives. They should be outside, mingling, having their photo taken, promoting the movie, but after everything they had given to the Skyrider Saga, she thought they deserved another few minutes of quiet.

He surprised her when he next spoke. “The worst thing about it is that it upset you.” He turned, and because she was already watching him, their eyes locked instantly. “You know, I could live with it if it was just me, but I hate that you’re upset. You don’t deserve that.”

It dawned on her then how close they were, with him slumped in the seat next to hers, turned towards each other. Maybe… Maybe this was more than friendly.

“I’ll be okay,” she said, trying to reassure him. She didn’t want him to think she was weak. “I’ll miss you though. It’s strange to think we won’t work together again. You’ve been there for almost my entire career.” Even if they could go months without speaking to each other, he’d always been in her future. She’d always known she would see him again and now that was gone. “Thank you, for everything. Really, you’ve been-” Her throat was getting tight. “You’ve taught me so much, and-”

Her voice caught when he grabbed her hand, swallowing it up in his. “Don’t say goodbye to me. Don’t do that. Rey, I- I never said anything because we work together but… I think you’re incredible.”

Rey blinked, waiting for more. He looked… He looked like Kylo, in the hut on Ach-to, and on Exegol. “As an actress?” she whispered. She had to know. She had to be sure, because she was not going to kiss Ben Solo, not with everything he meant to the industry and everything he meant to  _ her _ , if she wasn’t sure.

His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “As a person. I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and so strong, and fun, and bright, and-”

It wasn’t a movie kiss. She dove in a little too hard, shutting him up before he was ready and catching a bit too much tooth. She tried again, and this time he was there, pressing his lips into hers. It wasn’t the first time their lips had met, and yet, it was, because this wasn’t Kira and Kylo, but Ben and Rey, with all that implied. All their baggage, all their history, all their future might be.

His hand came up to cup her face, and she allowed the kiss to end.

Even after that, he still looked conflicted. That was Ben, always over-thinking. “Rey, I never- I never wanted- I know I’m older than you, and if you feel in any way like I’m taking advantage of the situation here-”

She cut him off with a smile. “Ben, it’s okay. I want to. I like you.”

“You do?”

She could say something flip here, like “Of course, you’re Ben Solo.” He was Hollywood’s golden child. But she didn’t, because it wasn’t about that. She was attracted to the man she had worked with for years, who was big but gentle, mysterious but still kind, who was patient but exact. Instead she just said “Yes, I do.”

For a moment, his eyes flicked over her, studying her. Then he said, “Ah, you do.”

Something about those words, that delivery, tickled something in Rey’s mind, and then it came to her. She snorted, and gave him a playful shove, dislodging his hand from her face.

He grinned, and boy, she was still weak to that. And now it was okay for her to blush over it. “Sorry, I couldn’t help it.”

“Very smooth.”

With limbs going everywhere, he freed himself from the seats, standing up and offering his hand. “The next time I offer my hand, you’ll take it.”

She did, getting up to join him. “Are you trying to redeem that movie one line at a time?”

“Maybe. Mostly I just think we’ll be missed if we don’t go back now, and that would be a problem.”

“You’re right.” They both had personal security who’d be looking for them, and they didn’t need to start the rumour mill grinding, not at this early stage.

Before they reached the doors, Ben stopped her. “One for the road?”

She let him take her into his arms for another kiss, this one soft and more skilful than the last, and she confirmed what she’d already suspected. Ben was an even better kisser than Kylo.


End file.
